Mines of Moria

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Darksatin
Posts: 621
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:14 pm
Location: Chalon sur Saône, France

Mines of Moria

A Board Game Scenario by Spencer Carney
This scenario first appeared in Issue 5 of « The Official MECCG Newsletter » by James Kight


This is a scenario that uses cards and rules from MECCG to simulate the fellowship's journey through the mines of Moria. My goal was to create a game that needed a minimum of new rules and that might take advantage of a boardgame-style map.

One way I tried to give the journey an "authentic" angle was to let the player start with the full fellowship of nine characters. (In and of itself, that has a pretty high "coolness factor" for me.) The second thing I did was to make combat the sole obstacle and to use creatures that were representative of what the fellowship would actually encounter in the mines.

The game can be played by one player or multiple players. I have found the solitaire variant to be fun, and you can modify the decks (both resource and hazards) to raise or lower the level of difficulty. Two suggestions - spells are vital (as is the wizard to cast them!), and you should consider resource cards that cancel combat rather than defeat it. You might find resources that give you an unfair advantage or that "break" the game; then again, my one play-tester complained about the game being too difficult "as is." It CAN be beaten, however, so give it a try!

Rules :

The Fellowship (Starting Company) :
Begin the game with nine characters and two non-unique minor items. Use the nine characters of the actual fellowship or any one Wizard and 8 characters with a total mind of 42 or less. The mind of each substitute character (one not from the actual fellowship) costs +3 its printed value. Characters and items are only unique for each player. You and your opponents can duplicate each other’s cards. General influence is not a factor in this scenario.

Deck Construction :
Each player will have his own play deck, consisting of resources only (no characters or hazards).

There will be 4 hazard decks:
1. Ruins & Lairs deck
2. Shadow-hold deck
3. Dark-hold deck
4. Perilous-deeps deck

Each hazard deck should be constructed with the following guidelines. Multiply each number by the number of players. When playing multi-player you can have more than 3 copies of a creature. These are suggested card lists.

Ruins & Lairs Deck : 13 cards
10 Creatures - Animals, Spiders, Drakes; 3 events. [Watcher in the Water x3, Lesser Spiders x3, Giant Spiders x3, Nameless Thing x1, Wake of War x3]

Shadow-hold Deck : 17 cards
12 Creatures - Orcs, Trolls; 5 events. [Little Snuffler x3, Orc-watch x3, Orc-lieutenant x3, Half-trolls of Far Harad x3, Minions Stir x3, Doors of Night x2]

Dark-hold Deck : 17 cards
12 Creatures - Orcs, Trolls, Undead; 5 events. [Orc-guard x3, Olog-hai x3, Chill Douser x3, Barrow-wight x3, Plague of Wights x2, Awaken Minions x3]

Perilous-deeps Deck : 4 cards
4 Creatures - Trolls, Balrog; 0 events. [Rogrog, Buthrakaur the Green, Umagaur the Pale, Durin’s Bane]
Rules of Play :

All rules are identical to those of standard MECCG play with the exception of the following:

* Your hand will consist of resources only, and your hand size is 3.
* Use a marker to track your company on the map. You must keep a single company.
* Keep a record of the number of turns.
* The East Gate and the West Gate are considered surface sites and all other sites are considered Under-deeps sites.
* Whenever your company has a choice of two paths to take, make an Under-deeps roll. If you fail the roll you must take the dotted red path. Otherwise you may choose which path to take.
* Once you have entered a Perilous-deeps site, all subsequent Under-deeps rolls are automatically successful.
* Draw cards based on the matching template for the site type to which you are moving. Resources are drawn first. Hazards are drawn and played one at a time.
* There is no hazard limit.
* If during your untap phase you announce that you will not move that turn, all your wounded characters heal and you skip the movement/hazard phase and the site phase. (Be sure to record the turn on the turn marker.)
* During each site phase, you must always enter the site and face the automatic-attack.
* If, during the site phase, you do not play any items, you can instead draw 2 cards before going to the End-of-Turn phase.

Ending the Game :
The game stops after any End-of-Turn phase that a company is at the East Gate. At the end of the game, each player uses the following (and ONLY the following) to calculate his point total:

* Add 5 points if you are at the East Gate.
* Add 1 point for each item you have in play with a MP value greater than 2.
* Add 1 point for each creature you defeated worth 2 or more MPs.
* Subtract 2 points for each of your dead characters.
* Subtract 1 point for each turn you took over 10.

This can be a tough scenario if you are unprepared. The odds are very good that you will lose a character or two, but it can be done without losing anyone. As the suggestion was made before, your best bet is to try to cancel the attacks instead of fight them. Eventually you will be overrun with creatures and one of the Hobbits (if you decide to use them) will die.

© Spencer Carney.
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Darksatin
Posts: 621
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2007 6:14 pm
Location: Chalon sur Saône, France

In the attached file, the map to play the "Mines of Moria" scenario (better to print in A3).
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Beezertheturnip
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Nov 25, 2019 1:51 am

After many years of meaning to try this scenario, under a loss to do with COVID related stuff, I finally gave a crack at it. I did not find it particularly difficult, going through three play attempts with only one wounded fellowship member between them, scoring 10, 11, and 12 points respectively.

I played with the "historical" fellowship, picking a pair of star glasses, one for Merry and another for Pippin.

My resource deck was as follows:
3x Gates of Morning
3x Concealment
3x Dark Quarrels
3x Vanishment
3x Not at Home
2x Many Turns and Doublings
1x Wizard's Flame
1x True Fana
1x Fifteen Birds in Five Firtrees
3x Dwarven Light Stone
2x Noldo Lantern
1x Torque of Hues
1x Dragon Helm
1x Aiglos
1x Glamdring
1x Orcrist.

The scenario notes are correct; Stealth (and I mean a strategy of canceling attacks ,not the actual card Stealth) is extremely powerful, as you usually only face 2-3 attacks in a turn, and never more than 5. The real key, however, is to play the lanterns and if you can the Torque of Hues, as soon as possible. The Torque's ability to cancel an attack every turn is really good in general, but in this sort of scenario where you'll never reach your "Hazard limit" anyway, it's just insane. And the lamps not only can help you with the orcs and trolls that are everywhere, but boosting your under-deeps rolls to make sure you stay near the nicer areas at the top. I did not go into any of the perilous deeps sites. I also as an aside did not play more than 1 item a turn, although I think I could have under RAW. I would like to say this was a balance and RAI thing, but in reality it was because I only remembered as I was cleaning up after the third game you can play 2 items a turn in an Under-Deeps site.

Regardless, if you view the "Canonical" score to be a 7 (No stops to heal, so they probably made it in 10 turns, Balrog was defeated, the Book of Mazarbul was the only trophy they took, and nobody died since I'm counting it as Gandalf playing Sacrifice of Form), it really shouldn't be hard to beat if you load up for bear in this scenario. I'm not 100% sure what should be done (if anything should be done) to balance it. Perhaps outlawing the items I identified earlier should be considered, or there should be more hazard draws so that the company faces more attacks. Anyway, I hope this doesn't come across as conceited, and I don't mean to trash a scenario that really is very interesting, but I do think that you can overprepare a resource deck for this scenario and win fairly easily with it.
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